


The Browncoat Job

by Ultra



Category: Firefly, Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Fusion, Badger and Sterling are Related, Boys Being Boys, Con Artists, F/M, Fighting Kink, Fights, Gen, Muscles, Team Bonding, Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2018-08-09 00:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7779226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes its more fun to come against someone you're not certain you can beat.</p><p>(Originally written for basched and based on her prompts: Eliot/Parker, River/Jayne, "Can't con a reader." and/or "Jayne vs. Eliot.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Browncoat Job

It was the usual kind of covert meeting, on a back-water moon that nobody would usually go to by choice. Unless you were born and raised in such a place, you might not even realise it existed, but smugglers had to have that kind of knowledge to get by.

Captain Malcolm Reynolds strode down the hill into the valley where his contact waited. He never did meet the man before the whole course of his life, but if they were ever going to off-load this cargo, he was going to have to take a chance. Less risk was involved, he felt, when he was flanked by Jayne and River, with Zoë up on the ridge behind a sniper rifle. Besides, this guy didn’t look so tough, and his back up wasn’t so great either. One muscle man and a slim blonde... but then the little girl types did have a way of surprising a person, Mal had found.

“Captain Reynolds, I presume?” he was greeted amiably by the gent he had come to meet. “I am...”

“No,” the muscle beside him cut him off, a too serious look on his face as he grabbed his employer's arm.

“Eliot what are you doing?” he hissed.

“Don’t even try the fake name, Nate,” he replied in a low voice.

His eyes moved almost imperceptibly towards River who smiled in such a way that Mal no longer felt the need to reach for his gun.

“Nate, huh?” the Captain said thoughtfully. “That’s a might strange since we came all the ways down here to meet a Tom Baker.”

“No use in us trying that with you,” said Eliot, folding his arms across his chest as he took a moment to size up Jayne before his eyes moved back to River and he returned her wide smile. “Can’t con a reader.”

“He is that much smarter than he looks,” she replied, her words a clear compliment despite how they might have been taken to the contrary. “But then, muscle men most often are,” she told him, her own eyes drifting to Jayne then.

Nobody thought to look to Parker, even when her own gaze narrowed and she started to fume. Eliot was hers these days. It was still kind of a new thing, but they were together now. She was the only one he had sex with, the one he brought gifts for. This reader girl had no right looking at her man that way. She didn’t like it, and when Parker didn’t like something, she had a tendency to stab first, think later...

“You wanted to con me and my crew, Mr Nate?” Mal checked, at which the mastermind shook his head.

“It’s actually Mr Ford, Nathan Ford,” he confirmed. “And the con wasn’t really about you. There’s a fella named Badger we were hoping to get access to...”

“I know him,” Mal cut in fast, nodding his head, unaware of what was happening to his left and right in these moments.

Whilst he and Ford got into a lengthy discussion about some old business and some new, there were certain significant glances being passed between their respective crew members. River and Eliot had some understanding between them, an immediate respect for each other, since he had been the first and only to identify her skill, and she had just as quickly complimented his own. Neither Parker nor Jayne appreciated their partners making eyes at each other, as they saw it. Of course, where Parker’s course of action was to go and drape herself off Eliot’s shoulder like a fashion accessory, Jayne’s was to get mad and threatening, such was his way.

“You best keep your eyes to your own woman, cowboy,” he told the hitter with a low growl, but Eliot didn’t even flinch.

His eyes shifted to meet the merc’s own and a smirk settled on his lips. Oh, he would just love to take this ape on, if for no other reason than to see who won. It ought to be Eliot himself, but it had been a while since he fought someone worthy of the effort. This guy might actually give him a run for his money.

“What you starin’ at now, ya feh feh pi goh?” Jayne spat when h realised he was now the focus of attention.

“I don’t know, man,” the hitter shrugged. “But it’s a powerful ugly hwun-dahn,”

That was all it took, as Eliot knew it would be, as River had known too. She yelled to Parker in time to get her to spin away before Jayne launched himself full force into Eliot. The two went sprawling across the sand, all arms and legs, and dirty cussin’. Mal and Nate barely registered the fight was happening as they continued their now joint revenge plot against the brothers named Badger and Sterling.

The girls were glad enough to watch the fight, and Parker was almost immediately over her reader-jealousy since it had been down to the brunette that she was out of the way before the fight started.

“Thanks,” she told the other young woman as she moved to stand beside her and admire the view of their boyfriends brawling.

“My name is River,” the reader said, politely offering a hand for Parker to shake, though her eyes never left the fight.

“Cool,” the thief replied, the two of them shaking on their greeting without ever sparing a glance for the other.

All these two saw was rippling muscles, glistening with sweat under the hot sun, as Eliot and Jayne tried their best to each get the upper hand. So evenly matched were they, this could easily go on for hours, but neither River nor Parker could mind. It was such a manly display of raw aggression as to make their hearts (and other places) flutter with the excitement.

“Men are such boobs,” River said at length, trying to sound as if she found the whole thing pathetic.

“Oh yeah,” Parker agreed easily, though her eyes never strayed from the scene anymore than her new friend’s did.

This was just too much fun!


End file.
